Richmond council, in south west London, is to shut a road in its area to all traffic for a fortnight to allow the amphibians to cross safely as they make their way to a nearby pond to breed.

It has taken the step after local residents reported large numbers of the toads dying under the wheels of cars on Church Road in Richmond in previous years as the animals tried to traverse from their home on Ham Common to the breeding site 330 feet away.

The council has now written to warn residents that they will face disruption during the two week closure, which is due to start on March 15, but volunteers have already started making “toad patrols” at night to help rescue any amphibians that try to make the journey early.

The move is one of a growing number of projects, which have included building bridges or underpasses under roads, to help protect toads and frogs from traffic.

Jonathan Fray, a highways engineer from Richmond who started conducting toad patrols two years ago, said that last year volunteers managed to rescue 306 toads by picking them off Church Road and carrying them to safety in buckets.

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He said: “It’s a great feeling to know you have helped to save them – they are so close to reproducing it feels like a real tragedy if they don’t make it.

“There’s only so much you can do as a volunteer, so it’s good to see the council taking on a conservationist position rather than worrying about any complaints from residents.

“It is a very small price to pay for helping protect the thousands of toads that use that crossing every breeding season.”

Toads have a strong migratory instinct and will follow the same route back to ancestral breeding ponds, no matter what stands in its way.

The Wildlife Trust estimates that approximately 20 tonnes of toads are killed in the UK each year trying to reach breeding waters. Numbers of many species of amphibians have dwindling in recent years due to road deaths, disease and drought.

“This migration is driven by the weather as the toads like warm, wet conditions. So whilst it will be difficult for us to predict exact dates and times, we will do our best to avoid inconvenience for the public.”

Bath and North East Somerset Council has also said last month that it intends to close a road on the outskirts of Bath for six weeks while toads are crossing.

Sivi Sivanesan, a spokesman for Froglife, said: “Long before these roads were even built, toads have followed the same instinct to go back to where they were born to spawn.

“Unfortunately, the busier these paths get the more dangerous they become for them. The number of fatalities we see every year is astonishing.

“If we don’t start helping the toads, we will see a great depletion in numbers and in the worst case, extinction.”

However, some local residents have questioned the need for such drastic action.

Marie Carmen Vaccaro, from north Kingston, said: “I am an animal lover, but what I am very annoyed about is that I will have to make long, unnecessary one-mile detours, waste time, fuel and carbon emissions just to avoid a toad migration that nobody in this area has ever witnessed.”